The side of a levee in Sacramento, California

A levee, levée (/ˈlɛviː/; French: [ləˈve]), dike (or dyke), embankment, floodbank or stopbank is an elongated naturally occurring ridge or artificially constructed fill or wall, which regulates water levels. It is usually earthen and often parallel to the course of a river in its floodplain or along low-lying coastlines.^[1]

Etymology[link]

Levee[link]

The word levee, from the French word levée (from the feminine past participle of the French verb lever, "to raise"), is used in American English (notably in the Midwest and Deep South). It originated in New Orleans a few years after the city's founding in 1718 and was later adopted by English speakers.^[2] The name derives from the fact the ridges of the levee are raised higher than both the channel and the surrounding floodplains.

Dike[link]

The modern word dike most likely derives from the Dutch word "dijk", with the construction of dikes in the Netherlands well attested as early as the 12th century. The 126 kilometres (78 mi) long Westfriese Omringdijk was completed by 1250, and was formed by connecting existing older dikes. The Roman chronicler Tacitus even mentions that the rebellious Batavi pierced dikes to flood their land and to protect their retreat (AD 70).^[3] The word dijk originally indicated both the trench and the bank. It is closely related to the English verb to dig (EWN).

In Anglo-Saxon, the word dic already existed and was pronounced with a hard c in northern England and as ditch in the south. Similar to Dutch, the English origins of the word lie in digging a trench and forming the upcast soil into a bank alongside it. This practice has meant that the name may be given to either the excavation or the bank. Thus Offa's Dyke is a combined structure and Car Dyke is a trench though it once had raised banks as well. In the midlands and north of England, and in the United States, a dike is what a ditch is in the south, a property boundary marker or small drainage channel. Where it carries a stream, it may be called a running dike as in Rippingale Running Dike, which leads water from the catchwater drain, Car Dyke, to the South Forty Foot Drain in Lincolnshire (TF1427). The Weir Dike is a soak dike in Bourne North Fen, near Twenty and alongside the River Glen, Lincolnshire. In the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads, a dyke may be a drainage ditch or a narrow artificial channel off a river or broad for access or mooring, some longer dykes being named, e.g. Candle Dyke.^[4]

Artificial levees[link]

The main purposes of an artificial levee are to prevent flooding of the adjoining countryside and to slow natural course changes in a waterway to provide reliable shipping lanes for maritime commerce over time; they also confine the flow of the river, resulting in higher and faster water flow. Levees can be mainly found along the sea, where dunes are not strong enough, along rivers for protection against high-floods, along lakes or along polders. Furthermore, levees have been built for the purpose of empoldering, or as a boundary for an inundation area. The latter can be a controlled inundation by the military or a measure to prevent inundation of a larger area surrounded by levees. Levees have also been built as field boundaries and as military defences. More on this type of levee can be found in the article on dry-stone walls.

Levees can be permanent earthworks or emergency constructions (often of sandbags) built hastily in a flood emergency. When such an emergency bank is added on top of an existing levee it is known as a cradge.

Some of the earliest levees were constructed by the Indus Valley Civilization (in Pakistan and North India from circa 2600 BC) on which the agrarian life of the Harappan peoples depended.^[5] Levees were also constructed over 3,000 years ago in ancient Egypt, where a system of levees was built along the left bank of the River Nile for more than 600 miles (970 km), stretching from modern Aswan to the Nile Delta on the shores of the Mediterranean. The Mesopotamian civilizations and ancient China also built large levee systems. Because a levee is only as strong as its weakest point, the height and standards of construction have to be consistent along its length. Some authorities have argued that this requires a strong governing authority to guide the work, and may have been a catalyst for the development of systems of governance in early civilizations. However, others point to evidence of large scale water-control earthen works such as canals and/or levees dating from before King Scorpion in Predynastic Egypt, during which governance was far less centralized.

Levees are usually built by piling earth on a cleared, level surface. Broad at the base, they taper to a level top, where temporary embankments or sandbags can be placed. Because flood discharge intensity increases in levees on both river banks, and because silt deposits raise the level of riverbeds, planning and auxiliary measures are vital. Sections are often set back from the river to form a wider channel, and flood valley basins are divided by multiple levees to prevent a single breach from flooding a large area. A levee made from stones laid in horizontal rows with a bed of thin turf between each of them is known as a spetchel.

Artificial levees require substantial engineering. Their surface must be protected from erosion, so they are planted with vegetation such as Bermuda grass in order to bind the earth together. On the land side of high levees, a low terrace of earth known as a banquette is usually added as another anti-erosion measure. On the river side, erosion from strong waves or currents presents an even greater threat to the integrity of the levee. The effects of erosion are countered by planting suitable vegetation or installing stones, boulders, weighted matting or concrete revetments. Separate ditches or drainage tiles are constructed to ensure that the foundation does not become waterlogged.

River flood prevention[link]

A levee keeps high water on the Mississippi River from flooding Gretna, Louisiana, in March 2005.

Prominent levee systems have been built along the Mississippi River and Sacramento River in the United States, and the Po, Rhine, Meuse River, Rhone, Loire, Vistula, the delta formed by the Rhine, Maas/Meuse and Scheldt in the Netherlands and the Danube in Europe.

The Mississippi levee system represents one of the largest such systems found anywhere in the world. It comprises over 3,500 miles (5,600 km) of levees extending some 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) along the Mississippi, stretching from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to the Mississippi Delta. They were begun by French settlers in Louisiana in the 18th century to protect the city of New Orleans.^[6] The first Louisiana levees were about 3 feet (0.91 m) high and covered a distance of about 50 miles (80 km) along the riverside.^[6] The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in conjunction with the Mississippi River Commission, extended the levee system beginning in 1882 to cover the riverbanks from Cairo, Illinois to the mouth of the Mississippi delta in Louisiana.^[6] By the mid-1980s, they had reached their present extent and averaged 24 feet (7.3 m) in height; some Mississippi levees are as high as 50 feet (15 m). The Mississippi levees also include some of the longest continuous individual levees in the world. One such levee extends southwards from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, for a distance of some 380 miles (610 km).

Coastal flood prevention[link]

Levees are very common on the flatlands bordering the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Canada. The Acadians who settled the area can be credited with construction of most of the levees in the area, created for the purpose of farming the fertile tidal flatlands. These levees are referred to as "aboiteau". In the Lower Mainland around the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, there are levees to protect low-lying land in the Fraser River delta, particularly the city of Richmond on Lulu Island. There are also levees to protect other locations which have flooded in the past, such as land adjacent to the Pitt River and other tributary rivers.

Spur dykes[link]

These typically man-made hydraulic structures are situated to protect against erosion. They are typically placed in alluvial rivers perpendicular, or at an angle, to the bank of the channel or the revetment,^[7] and are used widely along coastlines. There are two common types of spur dykes, permeable and impermeable, depending on the materials used to construct them.

Natural levees[link]

Schematic of natural levee formation by repeated flooding in rivers carrying fine sediments

Natural levees commonly form around lowland rivers and creeks without human intervention. They are elongate ridges of mud and/or silt that form on the river floodplains immediately adjacent to the cut banks. Like artificial levees, they act to reduce the likelihood of floodplain inundation.

Deposition of levees is a natural consequence of the flooding of meandering rivers which carry high proportions of suspended sediment in the form of fine sands, silts, and muds. Because the carrying capacity of a river depends in part on its depth, the sediment in the water which is over the flooded banks of the channel is no longer capable of keeping the same amount of fines in suspension as the main thalweg. The extra fines thus settle out quickly on the parts of the floodplain nearest to the channel. Over a significant number of floods, this will eventually result in the building up of ridges in these positions, and reducing the likelihood of further floods and episodes of levee building.

If aggradation continues to occur in the main channel, this will make levee overtopping more likely again, and the levees can continue to build up. In some cases this can result in the channel bed eventually rising above the surrounding floodplains, penned in only by the levees around it; an example is the Yellow River in China near the sea, where oceangoing ships appear to sail high above the plain on the elevated river.

Levees are common in any river with a high suspended sediment fraction, and thus are intimately associated with meandering channels, which also are more likely to occur where a river carries large fractions of suspended sediment. For similar reasons, they are also common in tidal creeks, where tides bring in large amounts of coastal silts and muds. High spring tides will cause flooding, and result in the building up of levees.

Levee failures and breaches[link]

Both natural and man-made levees can fail in a number of ways. The most frequent (and dangerous) is a levee breach. Here, a part of the levee actually breaks or is eroded away, leaving a large opening for water to flood land otherwise protected by the levee. A breach can be a sudden or gradual failure, caused either by surface erosion or by subsurface weakness in the levee. A breach can leave a fan-shaped deposit of sediment radiating away from the breach, described as a crevasse splay. In natural levees, once a breach has occurred, the gap in the levee will remain until it is again filled in by levee building processes. This increases the chances of future breaches occurring in the same location. Breaches can be the location of meander cutoffs if the river flow direction is permanently diverted through the gap.

Sometimes levees are said to fail when water overtops the crest of the levee. This will cause flooding on the floodplains, but because it does not damage the levee has fewer consequences for future flooding.

See also[link]

• Breakwater (structure)
• Bridge scour
• Bunding
• Dam
• Floodway
• Jetty
• Sleeper dike
• Subsidence
• Trench

References[link]

Notes[link]

General references[link]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Dikes

• "Well Diggers Trick", June 1951, Popular Science article on how flood control engineers were using an old method to protect flood levees along rivers from seepage undermining the levvee - i.e. drawings and illustrations
• "Design and Construction of Levees" US Army Engineer Manual EM-1110-2-1913, 30 April 2000, about the design and construction of levees.

v t e Coastal management Management Coastal management Accretion Coastal engineering Integrated coastal zone management Managed retreat Submersion Hard engineering A-jack Accropode Akmon Artificial reef Breachway Breakwater Cliff stabilization Dolos Flood wall Floodgate Gabion Groyne Levee Hard engineering Honeycomb sea wall Hudson's equation Revetment Riprap Seawall Tetrapod Training wall Xbloc Soft engineering Beach nourishment Beach drainage Sand dune stabilization Soft engineering Soft shore remediation Related topics Beach evolution Coastal erosion Land reclamation Longshore transport Modern recession of beaches

Ben Harper
Background information
Birth name	Benjamin Chase Harper
Born	(1969-10-28) October 28, 1969 (age 42) Claremont, California United States
Genres	Folk rock, blues rock, alternative rock, soul, funk rock, gospel, reggae, jam rock, neofolk
Occupations	Musician, Singer-songwriter, Humanitarian
Instruments	Vocals, electric guitar, lap steel guitar, slide guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboards, piano, bass guitar, drums, percussion, vibes
Years active	1992–present
Labels	Virgin, EMI Records
Associated acts	Ben Harper and The Blind Boys of Alabama Relentless7 Vanessa da Mata Ringo Starr Fistful of Mercy
Website	www.benharper.com
Notable instruments
Weissenborn lap steel guitar

Benjamin Chase "Ben" Harper (born October 28, 1969) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. Harper plays an eclectic mix of blues, folk, soul, reggae and rock music^[1] and is known for his guitar-playing skills, vocals, live performances and activism.^[2] Harper's fan base spans several continents.^[3] His albums have been commercially successful in North America, Europe and Oceania. Harper is a two-time Grammy Award winner as well, winning awards for Best Pop Instrumental Performance and Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album, in 2005.

Early life[link]

Harper was born in Claremont, in California's Inland Empire. His father, Leonard, was of African-American and Cherokee ancestry, and his mother, Ellen Chase-Verdries, is Jewish. His maternal great-grandmother was a Russian-Lithuanian Jew.^[4][5][6] His parents divorced when he was age five, and he grew up with his mother's family. Harper has two brothers, Joel and Peter.

Harper began playing guitar as a child.^[7][8] His maternal grandparents' music store The Folk Music Center and Museum laid a foundation of folk and blues for the artist, complemented by regular patrons Leonard Cohen, Taj Mahal and David Lindley and quotes of William Shakespeare and Robert Frost made often by his grandfather.^[9] At the age of 12, Harper played his first gig.^[10] During the '80s, in his teen years, Harper began to play the slide guitar, mimicking the style of Robert Johnson. Next, Harper refined his style, taking up the Weissenborn slide guitar.^[11] Harper broke out of the Inland Empire after being offered an invitation by Taj Mahal to tour with the artist. They recorded Taj Mahal's album Follow the Drinking Gourd, released in November 1990, and toured Hawaii.^[12]

Career[link]

Harper's trademark curtain call; 2003

In 1992 Harper recorded the LP Pleasure and Pain with Folk multi-instrumentalist Tom Freund. After this limited edition record, Harper secured a record deal with Virgin Records, which released his debut album, Welcome to the Cruel World in 1994. This was followed by Fight For Your Mind in 1995, with Juan Nelson on bass, which became a college radio favorite and included several songs that Harper still plays live regularly. .^[13]

In 1999 at the Santa Barbara Bowl, Harper met Jack Johnson, who was unknown at the time and had not recorded. Harper obtained a demo tape of twelve of Johnson's songs that he forwarded to his producer, J.P. Plunier, with whom Johnson recorded his first album.^[14]

Harper playing the weissenborn at Massey Hall, Toronto, Ontario.

Early in Harper's career, his music received more attention in Europe and was widely played in Australia (first on Triple J radio). Harper has made comments on a number of occasions that his career was kicked off in Australia. While he was a well-known and respected figure in the United States, he was a star in countries like Australia, New Zealand, France, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, receiving a great deal of airplay and critical acclaim. His popularity in Europe is such that he was French Rolling Stone magazine's Artist of the Year (Artiste De L'Année) in 2003,^[15] and his Australian tour that year for Diamonds on the Inside was highly successful.

In 2002, Harper was one of the featured singers covering Motown hits by Marvin Gaye in the documentary, Standing in the Shadows of Motown (a history of The Funk Brothers). In October 2004, Harper participated in the Vote for Change concert tour organized to benefit Moveon.org and encourage people in the swing states to vote during the 2004 U.S. presidential election. In the same month, Harper contributed a live recording of the song "Oppression" to For The Lady, a benefit album for jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner and Burmese pro-democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi. In 2006, Harper released the double album Both Sides of the Gun which debuted at #7 on the Billboard charts. Though uncredited, he appears briefly in the 2006 David Lynch film Inland Empire, alongside his wife Laura Dern.

Harper is part of the No Nukes group which is against the expansion of nuclear power. In 2007 the group recorded a music video of a new version of the Buffalo Springfield song "For What It's Worth".^[16][17] Harper's collaboration "Boa Sorte/Good Luck" with Brazilian singer Vanessa da Mata peaked at #1 in Brazil and Portugal. In Brazil it also won a highly coveted Prêmio Multishow for "Best Song" in 2008. Also in 2008, Harper participated in the benefit album Songs for Tibet.

On August 27, 2010, it was reported that Ben Harper had formed a band called Fistful of Mercy with Dhani Harrison and Joseph Arthur.^[18] Fistful of Mercy released their debut record, As I Call You Down, on October 5, 2010.^[19]

On May 17, 2011, Ben Harper's official site posted that his next album was released, entitled Give Till It's Gone. The album is a continuation of recording with Relentless7.^[20]

Personal life[link]

Family[link]

Harper with now estranged wife, Laura Dern in December 2009

In 1996, Harper married his first wife, Joanna. They had two children, a son and daughter, Charles Joseph and Harris.^[21]

On December 23, 2005, Harper married his girlfriend of five years, actress Laura Dern. They have two children together, son Ellery Walker Harper (b. August 21, 2001) and daughter Jaya (b. November 24, 2004).

On October 8, 2010, Harper, having been married for five years, filed for divorce from Dern, citing irreconcilable differences. He is seeking joint custody of their two children, as well as asking for a denial of spousal support for Dern.^[22]

On February 7, 2012, after being spotted at the Golden Globes, it was reported that Harper and Dern had reconciled. Divorce papers have not been formally withdrawn yet.^{[citation needed]}

Awards and nominations[link]

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

Live albums[link]

Other albums[link]

Virtual albums[link]

• iTunes Originals - Ben Harper
• iTunes Must Haves - Ben Harper

Singles[link]

• "Like A King / Whipping Boy" (1994)
• "Ground on Down" (1995)
• "Excuse Me Mr." (1996)
• "Gold to Me" (1996)
• "Faded" (1997) #54 UK^[62]
• "Jah Work" (1997)
• "Glory & Consequence" (1997)
• "Please Bleed" (1999)
• "Burn to Shine" (1999)
• "Forgiven" (2000)
• "Steal My Kisses" (2000) #15 U.S. Adult Top 40
• "With My Own Two Hands" (2003)
• "Diamonds On the Inside" (2003) #31 U.S. Adult Top 40
• "Brown Eyed Blues" (2004)
• "Wicked Man" (2004)
• "There Will Be a Light" (2004)
• "Better Way" (2006)
• "Both Sides Of The Gun" (2006)
• "Morning Yearning" (2006)^[63]
• "Fight Outta You" (2007) #61 Hot Canadian Digital Charts
• "Boa Sorte/Good Luck" (2007) (with Vanessa da Mata) #1 Portugal; #1 Brazil
• "In The Colors" (2008)
• "Fool For A Lonesome Train" (2008)
• "Shimmer & Shine" (2009)
• "Fly One Time" (2009)
• "Lay There & Hate Me" (2010)
• "Skin Thin" (2010)
• "The Word Suicide" (2010)
• "Never Tear Us Apart" (with INXS) (2010)
• "Rock N' Roll Is Free" (2011)
• "Don't Give Up on Me Now (2011, Italy only)
• "Walk Away" ("")

Special appearances[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2011)

Harper played a slide guitar version of the "Star-Spangled Banner" prior to Game 3 of the 2007 NBA Finals on June 12 in Cleveland. Harper performed alongside Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson and John Paul Jones at the Bonnaroo Music Festival in 2007. He also appears on the 2003 Pearl Jam DVD Live at the Garden where Harper plays alongside friends Pearl Jam for the songs "Daughter" & "Indifference".

Harper performed at several "Vote Obama" rallies and on the Willie Nelson show Outlaws & Angels. Harper teamed with the Skatalites to perform Fats Domino's "Be My Guest" on Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino. Harper was featured, alongside Jack Johnson, playing slide guitar with Toots and the Maytals, performing their 1970s reggae hit "Pressure Drop" on Saturday Night Live.

In January 2010, Harper and his band Relentless7 performed at the Grammy Museum with Ringo Starr in support of The Beatles drummer's self-produced album, Y Not.^[64] In early 2010, Harper also performed "Ohio" at the MusiCares tribute to Neil Young.^[65]

Filmography[link]

• 1998-2001: Daria (TV) – Camp Fear ("Born to Shine"/"Faded")
• 2001: I am Sam ("Strawberry Fields Forever")
• 2002: Standing in the Shadows of Motown ("Ain't Too Proud To Beg"/"I Heard It Through the Grapevine")
• 2003: One Tree Hill (TV) – Crash Into You
• 2004: Sleepover ("Way Away")
• 2005: Trust the Man ("Everything")
• 2006: Akeelah and the Bee ("Everything")
• 2006: Newport Beach (TV) – The Dawn Patrol ("Waiting For You")
• 2006: CSI: NY (TV) – And Here's to You, Mrs. Azrael ("Walk Away")
• 2008: Daylight Robbery ("Diamonds On The Inside")
• 2009: State of Play ("Please Don't Talk About Murder While I'm Eating")
• 2009: Dr House (TV) – Brave Heart ("Faithfully Remain")
• 2010: Conan (TV) – Dead Men Don't Wear Spanx ("Father's Son")
• 2010: Les Petits Mouchoirs (French Movie) - Ludo's death ("Amen Omen")
• 2010: Vampire Diaries (TV) – Katerina ("Amen Omen")
• 2010: The Fighter ("Glory & Consequence")

DVDs[link]

• Pleasure and Pain (2002)
• Live at the Hollywood Bowl (2003)
• Live at the Apollo (2005)

References[link]

Constructs such as ibid., loc. cit. and idem are discouraged by Wikipedia's style guide for footnotes, as they are easily broken. Please improve this article by replacing them with named references (quick guide), or an abbreviated title. (April 2010)

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Ben Harper

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ben Harper

• Official website
• Official Ben Harper Shop
• Ben Harper Live for Earth Day on National Geographic
• Ben Harper at RollingStone.com
• Ben Harper on Twitter

Charlie Musselwhite
Background information
Birth name	Charles Douglas Musselwhite
Also known as	Memphis Charlie
Born	(1944-01-31) January 31, 1944 (age 68)
Origin	Kosciusko, Mississippi, United States
Genres	Electric blues,[1] blues rock, southern rock, country blues
Occupations	Musician, singer, songwriter
Instruments	Harmonica, guitar, vocals
Years active	1967–present
Labels	Vanguard, Arhoolie, Capitol, Crystal Clear, Kicking Mule, Blue Rock'It, Alligator, Virgin, Real World, Narada
Website	http://www.charliemusselwhite.com/

Charlie Musselwhite (born January 31, 1944) is an American electric blues harmonica player and bandleader,^[1] one of the non-black bluesmen who came to prominence in the early 1960s, along with Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield. Though he has often been identified as a "white bluesman",^[2][3] he claims Native American heritage. Musselwhite was reportedly the inspiration for Dan Aykroyd's character in the Blues Brothers.^[4]

Biography[link]

Childhood[link]

Charles Douglas Musselwhite was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, United States. He has said that he is of Choctaw descent, and he was born in a region originally inhabited by the Choctaw. However, in a 2005 interview, he said his mother had told him he was actually Cherokee.^[5]

His family considered it normal to play music, with his father playing guitar and harmonica, his mother playing piano, and a relative who was a one-man band. At the age of three, Musselwhite moved to Memphis, Tennessee. When he was a teenager, Memphis experienced the period when rockabilly, western swing, and electric blues and other forms of African American music were combining to give birth to rock and roll. The period featured Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, as well as lesser known musicians such as Gus Cannon, Furry Lewis, Will Shade, and Johnny Burnette. Musselwhite supported himself by digging ditches, laying concrete and running moonshine in a 1950 Lincoln automobile. This environment was Musselwhite's school for music as well as life, and he acquired the nickname "Memphis Charlie."^{[citation needed]}

Career[link]

In true bluesman fashion, Musselwhite then took off in search of the rumored "big-paying factory jobs" up the "Hillbilly Highway", the Highway 51 to Chicago, where he continued his education on the South Side, making the acquaintance of even more legends including Lew Soloff, Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, Sonny Boy Williamson, Buddy Guy, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, and Big Walter Horton. Musselwhite immersed himself completely in the musical life, living in the basement of, and occasionally working at Jazz Record Mart (the record store operated by Delmark Records founder Bob Koester) with Big Joe Williams and working as a driver for an exterminator, which allowed him to observe what was happening around the city's clubs and bars. He spent his time hanging out at the Jazz Record Mart at the corner of State and Grand and the nearby bar, Mr. Joe's, with the city's blues musicians, and sitting in with Big Joe Williams and others in the clubs, playing for tips. There he forged a lifelong friendship with John Lee Hooker; though Hooker lived in Detroit, Michigan, the two often visiting each other, and Hooker served as best man at Musselwhite's third marriage. Gradually Musselwhite became well known around town.

In time, Musselwhite led his own blues band, and, after Elektra Records' success with Paul Butterfield, he released the legendary Stand Back! Here Comes Charley Musselwhite's Southside Band album in 1966 on Vanguard Records (as "Charley Musselwhite"), to immediate and great success.^[3][6] He took advantage of the clout this album gave him to move to San Francisco, where, instead of being one of many competing blues acts, he held court as the king of the blues in the exploding countercultural music scene, an exotic and gritty figure to the flower children. Musselwhite even convinced Hooker to move out to California.

Since then, Musselwhite has released over 20 albums, as well as guesting on albums by many other musicians, such as Bonnie Raitt's Longing in Their Hearts and The Blind Boys of Alabama's Spirit of the Century, both winners of Grammy awards. He also appeared on Tom Waits' Mule Variations and INXS' Suicide Blonde. He himself has won 14 W. C. Handy Awards and six Grammy nominations, as well as Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Monterey Blues Festival and the San Javier Jazz Festival in San Javier, Spain, and the Mississippi Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts.

In 1979, Musselwhite recorded The Harmonica According to Charlie Musselwhite in London for Kicking Mule Records, intended to go with an instructional book; the album itself became so popular that it has been released on CD. In June 2008, Blind Pig Records reissued the album on 180-gram vinyl with new cover art.^[7]

Charlie Musselwhite at the Liri Blues Festival, Italy, in 2000.

Unfortunately, Musselwhite, as with many of his peers, fell into alcoholism, and by his own admission^{[citation needed]}, he had never been on stage sober until after he stopped drinking entirely in 1987.

In 1990 Musselwhite signed with Alligator Records, a step that led to a resurgence of his career.

In 1998, Musselwhite appeared in the film Blues Brothers 2000. He provided the harmonica position in the super-ensemble The Louisiana Gator Boys, which also featured many other rhythm and blues legends such as B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Eric Clapton, Koko Taylor, Jimmie Vaughan, Dr. John, and Jack DeJohnette.

Over the years, Musselwhite has branched out in style. His 1999 recording, Continental Drifter, is accompanied by Cuarteto Patria, from Cuba's Santiago region, the Cuban music analog of the Mississippi Delta. Because of the political differences between Cuba and the United States, the album was recorded in Bergen, Norway, with Musselwhite's wife ironing out all the details.

Musselwhite believes the key to his musical success was finding a style where he could express himself. He has said, "I only know one tune, and I play it faster or slower, or I change the key, but it’s just the one tune I’ve ever played in my life. It’s all I know."^[8]

His past two albums, Sanctuary and Delta Hardware have both been released on Real World Records.

Musselwhite plays on Tom Waits' 1999 album Mule Variations. He can be heard at the beginning of the song "Chocolate Jesus" saying "I love it". Waits has mentioned that he feels this is his favorite part of the song.^[9]

In 2002, he featured on the Bo Diddley tribute album Hey Bo Diddley - A Tribute!, performing the song "Hey Bo Diddley".

Musselwhite lost both of his elderly parents in December 2005, in separate incidents. His mother, Ruth Maxine Musselwhite, was murdered.^[10]

Musselwhite joined the 10th annual Independent Music Awards judging panel to assist independent musicians' careers.^[11][12][13] He was also a judge for the 7th and 9th Independent Music Awards.^[14]

Charlie Musselwhite was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2010.

Discography[link]

• 1967 Stand Back! Here Comes Charley Musselwhite's Southside Band (Vanguard)
• 1968 Louisiana Fog (Cherry Red Records)
• 1968 Stone Blues (Vanguard)
• 1969 Tennessee Woman (Vanguard)
• 1969 Memphis Charlie (Arhoolie)
• 1970 Memphis, Tennessee (MCA)
• 1971 Takin' My Time (Arhoolie)
• 1974 Goin' Back Down South (Arhoolie)
• 1975 Leave the Blues to Us (Capitol)
• 1978 Times Gettin' Tougher Than Tough (Crystal Clear)
• 1978 Harmonica According to Charlie Musselwhite (Kicking Mule)
• 1984 Where Have All the Good Times Gone? (Blue Rock'It)
• 1986 Mellow-Dee (CrossCut)
• 1990 Ace of Harps (Alligator)
• 1991 Signature (Alligator)
• 1993 In My Time (Alligator)
• 1997 Rough News (Virgin)
• 1999 Continental Drifter (Virgin)
• 2000 Up & Down the Highway Live: 1986 (Indigo)
• 2002 One Night in America (Telarc)
• 2003 Darkest Hour (Henrietta)
• 2004 Sanctuary (Real World)
• 2006 Delta Hardware (Narada)
• 2007 Black Snake Moan Original Soundtrack (New West)
• 2008 Rough Dried - Live at the Triple Door (Henrietta)
• 2010 The Well (Alligator)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Website
• Charlie Musselwhite's music collection at MOG.com
• 2006 Interview
• Allmusic.com review of Delta Hardware CD
• Video of interview and performance clip